1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a method of parking a hard disk drive head, and more particularly to a method of parking a hard disk drive head which can minimize an impact upon parking the head by using an alternating current.
2. Related Art
In general, a hard disk drive protects data recorded on a disk by fixing its head in a specific position during power off or in a sleep mode. That is, when a user does not operate the hard disk drive for some time, a spindle motor stops rotating the disk, and a voice coil motor moves the head to a parking area allocated close to the center of the disk, to prevent damage to the data if the disk drive suffers an external impact.
I have found that disk drive components including the head can be damaged during the parking of the head. Efforts have been made to improve disk drives to prevent such problems.
Exemplars of recent efforts in the art include U.S. Pat. No. 5,828,522 for VELOCITY CONTROL OF HEAD LOAD/UNLOAD MECHANISM IN A DISK DRIVE USING DITHER issued to Brown et al., U.S. Pat. No. 5,729,399 for CONTACT START/STOP DISK DRIVE WITH MINIMIZED HEAD-DISK WEAR IN TEXTURED LANDING ZONE issued to Albrecht et al., U.S. Pat. No. 5,663,855 for MAGNETIC LATCHING APPARATUS FOR AN ACTUATOR OF A HARD DISK DRIVE issued to Kim et al., U.S. Pat. No. 5,455,726 for VERSATILE HEAD POSITIONER STOP issued to Liu, U.S. Pat. No. 4,890,176 for CRASH STOP AND MAGNETIC LATCH FOR A VOICE COIL ACTUATOR issued to Casey et al., and U.S. Pat. No. 4,679,102 for METHOD AND MEANS FOR PARKING READ/WRITE HEADS IN A DISC DRIVE USING THE BACK-EMF OF THE SPINDLE MOTOR TO OPERATE A STEPPER MOTOR issued to Wevers et al.
While these recent efforts provide advantages, I note that they fail to adequately provide a method of parking a hard disk drive head which efficiently and conveniently prevents damage to disk drive components including the head.
To solve the above problems, it is an objective of the present invention to provide a method of parking a hard disk drive head which can reduce impacts to the head and the head suspension during parking.
To solve the above problems, it is a further objective of the present invention to provide a method of parking a disk drive head which can reduce impacts to the head and the head suspension during parking, using an alternating current instead of a direct current to park the head of the disk drive.
Accordingly, to achieve the above objectives and others, there is provided a method of parking a hard disk drive head, comprising the steps of: determining whether no command is input during a predetermined time in a wake-up mode, or whether a power-off command is input; and moving the head to a parking area by driving an actuator to which the head is attached using an initially-set alternating current, if no command was input during the predetermined time or a power-off command was input. The initially-set alternating current can be a square waveform as an example.
To achieve these and other objects in accordance with the principles of the present invention, as embodied and broadly described, the present invention provides a method, comprising: identifying when a predetermined quantity of time elapses, wherein a command signal is not received by a disk drive unit during said predetermined quantity of time; identifying when a power-off command signal is received by said disk drive unit; when said predetermined quantity of time elapses and said command signal is not received by said disk drive unit during said predetermined quantity of time, transporting a head of said disk drive unit to a parking area by driving an actuator coupled to said head using an initially-set alternating current; and when said power-off command signal is received by said disk drive unit, transporting said head of said disk drive unit to said parking area by driving said actuator coupled to said head using said initially-set alternating current.
To achieve these and other objects in accordance with the principles of the present invention, as embodied and broadly described, the present invention provides a method, comprising: identifying when a predetermined quantity of time elapses, wherein a command signal is not received by a disk drive unit during said predetermined quantity of time; and when said predetermined quantity of time elapses and said command signal is not received by said disk drive unit during said predetermined quantity of time, transporting a head of said disk drive unit to a parking area by driving an actuator coupled to said head using an initially-set alternating current, said alternating current controlling a speed of said head while said head is transported to said parking area.
To achieve these and other objects in accordance with the principles of the present invention, as embodied and broadly described, the present invention provides an apparatus, comprising: a disk having a data area storing first data and a separately located parking area not storing the first data; a transducer reading the first data from and writing the first data to said data area of said disk, said transducer being transported from said data area to said parking area when a power off signal is received, and said transducer being transported from said data area to said parking area when a command signal is not received during a predetermined quantity of time; an actuator being coupled to said transducer; a memory unit storing power data corresponding to a predetermined alternating current; and a control unit being coupled with said memory unit and said actuator, said control unit controlling said actuator by utilizing said alternating current corresponding to said power data, wherein said control unit controls said actuator to perform said transporting of said transducer to said parking area.
The present invention is more specifically described in the following paragraphs by reference to the drawings attached only by way of example. Other advantages and features will become apparent from the following description and from the claims.